Through Hell and Back Again
by WriterOfNeverKnown
Summary: His heart was beating; he knew that much because it hurt. After Dachau is liberated by the Americans in April 1945, Max Vandenburg searches for his family in Stuttgart, but soon realizes that the only family he has left lives at 33 Himmel Street. But he doesn't know that only one member of his family is still alive. Rated T for subject matter.
1. Liberation

**April 29, 1945**

His heart was beating; he knew that much because it hurt. Each time the muscle keeping him alive thumped in his chest, his ribs ached. Lying in his bed, Max groaned softly, his voice failing halfway through, and shifted painfully off his side and onto his back. His spine protested beneath him, but he did his best to ignore it. His whole body hurt: his joints creaked; his non-existent muscles burned; his head felt as if it was splitting open.

Lurching up, Max coughed hard, feeling close to forcing his internal organs up his esophagus. He knew something was horribly wrong with him; it wasn't just that he was exhausted and emaciated to the point of being able to count each of his ribs and identify each jointed bone in his fingers. He must have caught something from the other men in his building. The month before, he had overheard a few of the SS guards talking about an outbreak of some kind in the camp. Max had known it would spread quickly; there were so many inmates at Dachau that any hope of sanitation had crawled under the cremation building and died there.

He must have caught whatever unbelievably horrid disease the guards had been discussing. He was sure once again that he was going to die in this camp, in this very bed, and besides the sickness, he had lost all desire to live. He had no one. He could only assume that his family was dead. His friends were somewhere only God knew. The Hubermanns were safe in their home, living good German lives to the best of their abilities. The Book Thief didn't visit him in his dreams or nightmares anymore. It used to be that he saw her every week, but it had been months since he had dreamed of her.

As he shivered under his thread-bare blanket, Max heard gunshots, but ignored them. He had become – as much as he hated to say it – _accustomed_ to the sound of his fellow human beings being mowed down mercilessly by the SS soldiers. The shots continued longer than usual, however, and for a second, Max wondered what was happening. But then his attention slipped out of his reach. He began thinking about the Book Thief and her books, Hans Hubermann and his accordion, Rosa Hubermann with her spoon.

Suddenly, daylight flooded Max's bunk and he threw his arms over his eyes to shield them. Shouts and hammering feet surrounded him and he fought nausea to look around. Men in brown uniforms and rifles ran between the bunks, searching the crammed building. Max was just coherent enough to recognize that these men were not SS guards. The men yelled things to each other in a language Max didn't understand, brandishing their rifles around the sleeping quarters before slinging them over their shoulders and taking time to examine the inmates in the beds.

A man younger than Max knelt beside Max's bed and met his eyes. The boy – for he was more on the boy side of the line than the man side – pulled Max's blanket back and his shirt up. Max fumbled with the boy's hands, trying to stop him, not understanding what the boy was doing. The boy saw the tender red rashes on Max's paper-thin skin and called something to the soldiers around him. One near the door answered in the same language.

He said something to Max in a soothing tone and with a smile. Within it, Max caught what he thought could be the boy's name: Jack Miller. Slowly, Max's fogged brain came to understand that this was either a hallucination or an Ally soldier come to rescue him. He sincerely hoped it was the latter.

"Wie heisst du?" Jack asked in halting German, attempting to bridge the language gap between himself and Max. His pronunciation was terrible, but Max understood what he was asking: _What is your name?_

After a coughing fit during which Max jolted about in his bed and Jack took his hand, Max whispered his name twice to the soldier. Jack smiled and said, "Guten tag, Max."

Max couldn't help but return the greeting with a tiny smile. Strangely, it didn't hurt.

Jack pointed to his own chest and said, "Amerikaner."

Now the smile was real. A sense of safety and peace settled over Max Vandenburg. The Allies had finally arrived. The American soldiers were here to rescue the sick and dying people of Dachau. Max knew he was a far reach from saved, but he felt hope bloom inside him for the first time in two and a half years. Maybe he would make it out of this horrid place after all.


	2. Recovery

**June 27, 1945**

The building was quiet; all the men were sleeping, not quite peacefully, but as close to peacefully as they could in Dachau.

Max Vandenburg sat up in his bed and looked around. He felt invigorated for the first time in almost three years. His vision was clear and his body no longer ached with each breath he took. He was still recovering from what the Ally doctors told him was typhus, which he had caught from the other sick inmates in his bunk building, but now he felt more like his twenty-eight years rather than eighty. During the past two months, the Ally soldiers had separated the sick from the not-sick, nursing them all back to health in different ways. The sick were treated by the doctors and fed broth until their shrunken stomachs could take vegetables and meat; the not-sick were pulled from the jaws of death with food that was slowly and carefully given to bring back their strength.

Now, Max was nearly done recovering from his terrible bout with typhus. He had won that fight, as he had won his imaginary fist-fights in the Hubermanns' basement a million years ago. He could eat anything served him by the nurses, and could even walk around the bunk building with a little help. He was going to live. Soon, he would be going home.


	3. Walking

**July 14, 1945**

Max was walking by himself. For the first time since he had gotten sick months ago, he was walking the perimeter fencing, walking under the wide blue sky. He struggled to make his way around the edge of Dachau, one palm brushing the chain-link fence to steady his uneven steps. He hated touching it, hated seeing it. The fence only reminded him that he had seen thousands of people die in this little pocket of hell, and that he had almost become one of them. How many hopeless people in dirty rags had touched this very part of the fence's chains and wished they could escape the fate they knew was awaiting them?

Max tried to push the idea from his mind. He circled slowly around the prison part of the camp. The gates in the fences separating the sections of the camp were open wide, but none of the inmates were allowed to exit because they might carry the disease into the outside world. From his vantage point, Max could see the front gates. A wave of claustrophobia crashed over him when he saw that the gates closed and locked. But then he saw that people milled around on the other side, as if trying to catch a glimpse of something inside. Ally soldiers patrolled both sides of the gate, not to keep the recovering people in, but to keep the curious eyes out. Max released a long, strenuous breath and continued back to his building.

After being ushered back into bed by a nurse, Max Vandenburg fell asleep and dreamed of Book Thief for the first time in months.


	4. Something for the Pain

**August 3, 1945**

As he passed under the archway, Max looked up at the iron inscription above him: Arbeit Macht Frei. _Work Makes You Free._

Max felt bile rise in his throat at the thought of all the people who bought their soul's freedom with the death of their bodies as they worked for the Nazis. With a thin coat over his arm, Max turned left outside the gates and walked steadily in the direction of the mass cemetery which the citizens of the city of Dachau had been forced to create. They had buried every single body they could find, guarded and guided by the Ally soldiers.

The headstones went on forever. Max couldn't see the end. They were made crudely, sometimes with first names, sometimes with surnames as well. Most were just small crosses because no one knew to whom the body belonged. Kneeling slowly, Max touched a wooden cross with his fingertips and then shrank back, emotions choking him. What if he had become one of these graves? No one would remember him. No one would ever know he had been on this earth at all.

He sat in the dirt for a long time, sobbing and hoping it would help, that it would somehow heal the brokenness inside his soul. He hoped it would numb his heart so that it didn't hurt so badly. But none of this happened. Max sobbed and his heart only became heavier, more painful, more unbearable.

Finally, Max found the strength to stand again and go home. He planned on going back to Stuttgart to look for his family, praying that their disappearance was not to the concentration camps, and to search for Walter Kugler, the man to whom he owed his life.

Suddenly, something touched Max's arm. His whole body tensing, he whipped around in alarm only to find a woman in a blue-patterned dress. She held his arm tightly, clinging to him almost desperately.

"Please," the young woman begged. Max then noticed the tears streaming down her face. "Please, forgive me! I didn't know! I had no idea, I promise! Forgive me!" She shook his arm hard and Max took an involuntary step backwards, but the woman wouldn't let him go. "Please!" she shouted. "Forgive me, please, forgive me!"

She kept repeating it, over and over again as if it was a prayer of desperation. As if she needed to know that she would not be damned for not knowing what was happening in her own town. She was looking for some kind of assurance, but Max could not give it. He felt an overwhelming hatred towards this woman and wanted to yell and scream at her, to drag her into Dachau and force her to stare at the "showers" that killed thousands of human beings with poisonous gas and the massive ovens that burned away the remains of those people. He wanted her to fully understand what she had allowed to happen, because he knew that she really had no idea of the horrors that had taken place here, the horrors he had been forced to live through.

But before he could do any of this, a man arrived and began prying the woman off Max's arm. They both had the perfect German blonde hair and blue eyes, and this made Max hate them even more. The man was tall and strong, much stronger than the woman's grip on the thin, gangly Jew, and he easily pulled her away.

"Come along, Monika," the man said, holding the woman around the waist and already starting to back away from the Jew. The man gave Max an undeniably disgusted look, as if Max were a bug he had found under his shoe. He was probably one of the loathsome Germans who had supported the Fuhrer's extermination of the Jews; he probably thought himself part of the "master race," above everyone else just because he got a few recessive genes.

"It's time to go home," the man told the woman, turning away from Max without even looking at his face.

_Can't look the dirty, unworthy Jew in the eyes,_ Max thought bitterly.

"Forgive me!" Monika screamed again as the man pulled her away.

Max watched them walk away from Dachau camp, up the street back towards the main town of Dachau on the river. When they disappeared, Max kicked the ground, his anger bursting out of him. What he wouldn't have given for a good fist fight right then. He had almost lost his life; he had been lucky. Hundreds of thousands of Jews and other outcasts had been slaughtered mercilessly at Dachau and other labor camps at the hands of those who believed themselves to be better than the dirt people they were exterminating. All that suffering, all those deaths, and the only thing the woman could do was beg forgiveness for being too absorbed in her own perfect life to notice the burning fires of hell just down the street. The man didn't care at all. Max found himself praying that man would burn for eternity for his evil soul.

As he made his way towards the town of Dachau to board a train to Stuttgart, Max thought of Monika and her despair. _Forgive me_, she had begged.

Max found it unbelievably easy to answer her: "God, no. Never."


	5. Gravity

**October 12, 1945**

The midnight train moved slowly away from Stuttgart. Max stared out the window as the rain slid down the glass, hiding the countryside from his view. Sighing heavily, he dropped his forehead onto the glass, letting its coolness seep onto his skin; tears slipped down his thin face, nearly invisible against the raindrops.

No one else entered Max's compartment, leaving him alone with his thoughts for the next six hours. He almost wished that young couple, the old woman, or even the teenagers had stopped to claim the seats across from him. At least then he would have been distracted enough to keep him from dwelling too deeply on his family. On the other hand, Max was thankful he was by himself; now if he cried - which he was already doing, not fully aware of it yet – he didn't have to worry about what others thought of him. He was already a Jew, scum the perfect German race scrapped off the bottoms of their fancy boots. He didn't need to be the disturbed, grown-man found sobbing like a child in his carriage as well.

The train picked up speed, causing Max to sway in his seat, and he sat up. His left hand rested protectively on his small suitcase packed with clothing he had bought in Stuttgart as he settled himself in for a long train ride; he has lost everything before, and he wasn't willing to let it happen again, even if he was simply protecting a few shirts, some pants, socks, and undergarments. He had also been able to find a few photographs of his family. They were small, water-stained, and crumpled, but they were still there, still clinging to life as Max had done for seven years. The smiles of the people he had loved the most haunted him in his dreams, but Max didn't want those night visions to stop; he longed for them, needed them, begged for them even though it hurt terribly to see them.

The tears came again, much stronger now, unstoppable, and Max propped his elbows on his knees and dropped his face into his spindly hands. Their faces flashed behind his eyelids and he was forced to remember the horrors they suffered and the terrible things he learned in Stuttgart.

Even though he knew they wouldn't be there, Max went to his Aunt Ruth's house first, but as he expected, a stranger opened the door. The kindly woman gave Max the few bits of their life that his family had left behind and the photographs, but he had only kept the photographs, taking them out of their cracked frames and carefully nestling them between his shirts in the suitcase.

It took over two months to learn what had happened to his family, travelling all over Germany, chasing leads. He hated that each one of those searches ended in the deepest, most heart-wrenching sorrow he had ever known.

Walter was the easiest to find. His sister Elsa still lived in the house where they both grew up and she answered the door when Max went looking for his friend. After inviting him in, making tea, and sending her two sons outside to play, Elsa sat down with Max and told him of Walter's fate. Not long after Max left for Molching, Walter was drafted into the Nazi Army and sent immediately to Russia with the rest of his battalion. He died, not in battle, but in the assaulting cold of the Russian countryside, suffering more than if he had been shot, and dying alone. Max left the Kugler's home stunned and heartsick.

It took him longer to find his family, the people he had left behind him without so much as a glance over his shoulder. He finally learned that when they disappeared in 1940, they ended up in one of the many ghettos infesting Germany. They remained there for a little over a year, starving and wasting away, until they were loaded onto a train and sent to Natzweiler-Struthof, the labor camp nearest to Stuttgart, in late 1941. After that, their paths were harder to follow and more confusing, splitting up and dropping off, but he found their ends eventually.

Max's mother was the first one to die. She was pushed into the gas chamber immediately upon arrival at Natzweiler and brutally murdered with other men and women who were too old to work adequately for the perfect race.

Max's cousin Sarah's two sons – Jacob and Benjamin – were worked to death within the first month of their time at Natzweiler.

Sarah's husband Judah was shot by SS soldiers while trying to pass his food through the fence to his wife so that she might live. Max cringed at the thought of his gentle cousin falling to her knees in the dirt, screaming and trying to reach her husband through the fence's links. Never before had Max seen two people more in love with each other. Sarah must have been torn apart that day.

Isaac's younger sister Hannah was violated by a band of SS soldiers, and became pregnant by them. Then she died in the infirmary when she went into premature labor and the doctor found no reason to save her or the child – a baby boy who no doubt would have had his mother's beautiful green eyes.

Isaac himself was stationed in the cremation building, working endless hours picking up paper-thin corpses, laying them on metal stretchers, and pushing the bodies into the fiery ovens until there was nothing left of them, nothing left but their ash to choke on and their essence to eventually be forgotten. Isaac was shot down when he refused to burn a naked, emaciated young man who was still alive, just barely.

Aunt Ruth and Sarah survived the longest. They made it to the evacuation of Natzweiler-Struthof and were forced on the march all the way to Dachau with thousands of other inmates. Aunt Ruth fell frequently, but Sarah always helped get her up and moving again. On the fourth day, however, Aunt Ruth could not get back up anymore. Sarah tried to carry her aunt's frail, thin body, but with her own strength non-existent, she found it impossible. As soon as Sarah stumbled to the ground with Aunt Ruth's body, an ugly SS soldier shot and killed Aunt Ruth. Again, Sarah screamed. She didn't last long after that. Eventually, she collapsed from exhaustion and starvation and cold, dying before the SS soldiers could even draw their weapons to kill her.

Lifting his head, Max tried to force the memories away, not wanting to relive them for the millionth time. Besides, he would see someone's death replay in his nightmares tonight no matter what. Wiping away the remainder of his tears, Max stood, dimmed the lights in his carriage, and lay down on his bench seat with his arms folded under his head and his suitcase safely between his feet.

He lay there for a long time, staring at the ceiling, listening to the patter of the rain and the clatter of the train on the rails. The sway of the train car beneath him rocked him into a restless sleep in which he saw the Book Thief's face floating around him, wearing different expressions, most of them some variation of sad, lost, or alone. He kept trying to reach out to her, but as soon as his fingers got close to her, she would slip away.

Max Vandenburg – the Sky Stealer – was on his way back to Molching. He was going to the only place left in the world he could call home: 33 Himmel Street. He wanted to properly thank Hans and Rosa Hubermann for keeping him alive even when it threatened their own lives and the life of their foster daughter. She was the one Max longed to see the most: the Book Thief, the Word Shaker.

Max knew that when he woke, when the train slowed and finally stopped, he would be close. He would find the Word Shaker and hug her and thank her. He was almost there.


	6. Get Up

Five days after black and red collide  
The motion sickness past, I'll be the first to stand

Crawling on the ash, she's pitiful  
She's lost her sense of light; she has to hold my hand

I need you

Get up  
Get up

* * *

**October 13, 1945**

The hissing of the train's brakes woke Max, and he sat up, rubbing his eyes. His carriage slowly swayed, working its way to a stop, and he looked out the window. The sun was just rising in the east, lighting up the countryside, and then the city of Munich. It came closer and closer, and Max stared open-mouthed at it.

The train stopped outside the city and all passengers who expected to get into Munich had to walk the rest of the way. As Max stepped off with his suitcase clenched tightly in his left hand, he understood why.

The once great city was in shambles. Colossal mountains of rubble loomed at the edges of the city where they had been dumped to use for reconstruction. Buildings were missing entire floors, chunks blown out of them like some massive creature had taken a few bites. Even two years after the bombing, the city still looked pitiful and crippled, its heart blown apart by Ally bombs. Many of the people walked through their home town looking terrified of their own shadows.

Max wandered through Munich in a sort of stunned silence. He saw the destruction around him and wanted to ask all these people, all the Germans, all the Nazi soldiers, whether it was all worth this. Stuttgart had been bombed as well, but it was nothing compared to this organized chaos. Thousands of people had died in Munich and all over the Axis countries. Max didn't understand how Hitler's master race could have been worth all this death and suffering.

As he found himself on the outskirts of Munich, just a few miles from Molching, Max turned and looked at Munich one more time. He tried to see her in all her German glory, filled with happy people who weren't concerned with being better than everyone else. But he couldn't do it. His imagination didn't stretch that far. All he could see was a once beautiful city reduced to shaking foundations, petrified souls, and crumbling memories.

Max turned his back and walked on.

* * *

When Max finally reached Himmel Street, he stopped dead. Everywhere he looked, there was destruction and rubble. This part of the city had not yet been cleaned up after the October 1943 bombing. The houses lay in ruins beside the street, brought to their knees by bombs and hatred.

Max dropped his suitcase onto the dirty road and ran. He forgot about everything else in the world and ran down the left side of the street counting backwards until he reached what he was sure had once been house number 33. He stood silently on the front walk, his arms limp at his sides, his lungs fighting to recover from the sudden exercise, and stared at the rubble that had been his home.

Even during all his fights, all the punches to the face and the kicks to the gut he had taken, Max Vandenburg had never cried. He never showed his opponent any weakness; he believed himself to be strong, stronger than the other boys who screamed when their noses broke under his fist or someone else's. But now, Max realized something vitally important: he was not strong at all. His whole body, his whole being, was nothing but weakness. He realized this as that weakness pooled in his eyes, dripped down his thin cheeks, and fell to the ground. That weakness pushed its way up from his stomach, smashing his heart and choking him as it left his mouth in an agonizing wail.

Weeping, Max stumbled up the cluttered front path and climbed into the rubble of the house. He searched desperately, though he wasn't sure what he was looking for. If the Hubermanns had been here, they weren't anymore, but he looked for them anyways. He shoved a massive chunk of the roof aside and stumbled upon the basement, the quiet corner of the world he had called home for so long. Sliding down into it, Max turned around in circles, half of his cracked heart hoping that he was in the wrong house, on the wrong street, on the wrong planet.

But there they were: his paintings. The rope cloud and the dripping sun held vigil on the back wall, and Max crossed to them, laying his hands against them. They were faded and nowhere near as brilliant as they had been three years ago. Resting his forehead against the cold, dirty wall, Max wept in broken, choked sobs which echoed around him in the small space.

When he turned around and looked up, he was face-to-face with the Fuhrer. Hitler stood before him, his face blank. Rage like nothing he had ever felt blossomed and exploded inside Max, and he launched himself at the almighty Fuhrer. Max gave everything in him to this fight, all of his strength and rage, pummeling Hitler over and over again until he lay on the floor, staring up at Max with wide, terrified eyes.

Panting heavily and ignoring a stitch in his side, Max squatted beside the scared man and spat into his face.

_Was it worth all this?_ Max asked, venom in his voice.

The Fuhrer did not answer.

_Was your perfect race worth all those lives?! _Their_ lives?! TELL ME!_ Max grabbed Hitler by his shirt collar and shook him, but he remained silent.

Max stood up and climbed back out of the basement, leaving the Fuhrer lying in the dirt, beaten and shamed by a Jew, the same vermin he had tried to eradicate from the world. Well, he hadn't gotten Max, and he never would.

A clattering noise alerted Max to the fact that he wasn't as alone as he had thought. Scanning the remains of Himmel Street, Max saw a man dressed in rags digging through the ruins of a house across the street. Forgetting that even in his rags, this man looked much stronger than he, Max ran to him and grabbed him firmly by his jacket.

"What happened here?" Max demanded, giving the startled man a good shake. "What happened?!"

"The – the bombs…!" the man stuttered. "Two years ago! Hundreds of bombs!"

"Two years…" Max repeated, willing it not to be true. Could they really have been dead for two years without him knowing, without him feeling it? "The people. The people who lived on this street… Where are they? Where did they go?"

"They're all dead," the man said, trying to squirm out of Max's grip. "Every single one of them…"

Something heavy and unbearable landed on Max's shoulders and his knees gave out. Crashing to the ground, he knelt in the dirt, weeping again, clutching his hands over his heart. His body folded in on itself, closing him into an invisible box as the pain and the loss assaulted him, beating him where it hurt the most: his heart. He could feel it shatter to a million pieces under the pressure of pain's whips and burning fire of loss. When he looked into his hands, he could have sworn he saw shining shards of glass that had once been his heart.

"Everyone?" He knew the answer, but he had to ask one more time. "Every single person here on this street?"

"Everyone except that little girl that lived in number 33."

Max looked up to find the man pointing back across the street. "She's alive?" Max asked out loud, choking on the words like they were too big for his mouth. How could she be alive after all this? If everyone else was gone, how could she be alive?

The man nodded slowly at Max. "_Ja._ The rescuers found her in the basement."

The basement! So it _was_ deep enough! Some of the weight lifted away and Max's shoulders straightened. He pushed himself to his feet. "Where is she? Do you know where she is now?"

"I think she lives with Mayor Hermann and his wife."

"Which street?"

The man gave Max a cautious look. "Why? Do you know her? I've never seen you around here before."

"Yes, I know her. She's my…" What could he say? His savior? His angel? His best friend? His family? "She's my niece," he said, settling for a family relation; after all, she really was his only family left.

After another moment of hesitation and a pitiful "Please" from Max, the man sighed. "The top of Grande Strasse, the big house on the hill. You can't miss it."

Without thinking, Max turned and ran again. He snatched up his suitcase as he bolted past and sprinted through Molching, his old coat flapping behind him in the breeze he created. It didn't take him long to reach Grande Strasse, and he jumped right up the front steps, both terrified and excited. He didn't bother with the knocker; instead, he rammed his weak fist against the wood of the door until a tall woman with pale hair opened it.

He stared at her for a second before saying, "Is Liesel Meminger here?"

The woman – probably Frau Hermann, the mayor's wife – cocked her head. "Who are you?" she asked in a low voice.

"My name is Max Vandenburg. I'm Liesel's uncle. Please, is she here?"

Frau Hermann's face lit up the tiniest bit when Max said his name, and she smiled at him. "Liesel is with Herr Steiner today, helping him in his shop." Before Max could even open his mouth to ask, Frau Hermann continued, "On the corner of Leinen Strasse and Munich."

"_Danke!_" Max said, grinning and shaking the woman's hand quickly before he went bounding off down the street. "Thank you so much!" he called back.

"You're welcome," Frau Hermann said, even though she knew he couldn't hear her anymore. She closed the door with a smile.

* * *

Max stood with his back against the side of the brick shop, out of sight of the windows. Alex Steiner's shop was small and empty of people, but he stood behind the counter all the same. A pang of sorrow hit Max as he remembered that Herr Steiner had lived on Himmel Street, right next door to number 33. Max didn't know how he had survived, but his whole family was dead and gone. Max remembered Liesel talking to him by the fireplace on cold winter nights, telling him all about her best friend Rudy Steiner. The boy with the candlelight hair and eyes like a clear summer sky.

Max tried to calm his labored breathing. He took deep breaths as he set his suitcase at his feet and ran his fingers through his hair.

_His hair is like feathers,_ the Book Thief had said.

He smiled, remembering the comparison.

* * *

Finally, Max is ready. He takes one more breath, turns, and pushes the door of the shop open. He tries to walk in as if he is any other normal German man coming for a suit, but he has come much too far to be anything but himself: a haggard Jew looking for his family.

Alex Steiner stands up a bit straighter behind the counter and studies Max. Max does the same to him. Herr Steiner is the grown-up and beaten down version of the way Liesel described Rudy to him; Rudy got his candlelit hair and bright blue eyes from his father.

Steeling himself, Max takes his time approaching the counter, his broken heart thundering like a storm inside his chest. He fights tears and looks at Alex Steiner.

"Is there someone here by the name of Liesel Meminger?" Max asks, his voice thick with emotion.

"Yes, she's in the back," returns Herr Steiner. Max's heart leaps wildly, jarring him. "May I ask who is calling on her?"

Just as Max opens his mouth, absolutely certain that no sound will come out of it, an old curtain covering a doorway behind the counter is ripped open and someone is standing there. For a second, Max does not recognize her. She is no longer the little girl he wrote books for in the basement of their home. She is a young woman who has been through hell and back again; it shows in the lines above her eyebrows and the frown on her mouth. But as soon as she sees Max Vandenburg standing in the middle of the shop, staring at her, her dark brown eyes flood with tears.

Without a sound, she runs around the counter and flies straight into Max's slender arms. She gasps his name over and over again, like a prayer, as if she cannot believe he is here. Max buries his face in her long golden hair and holds her as tightly as he can. He says her name gently, lovingly. They sway on their feet, sure to go down soon with both their weight on Max's fragile legs.

They are hugging.

Then Liesel pulls back enough for her to look up into Max's eyes, steadying them both again. She reaches up with one small hand and cups Max's cheek gently. "Is it really you?" she asks, repeating their moving, heart-felt exchange for a third time.

The first time she asked him that question, she was a character in a small, handwritten book given before a quick goodbye and a sad separation. She was the Word Shaker, and he the small, strange man with the hammer and nails.

The second time, she had been the Book Thief, the small, brave girl who cared not what punishment she received, but came to him and kept him going, kept him alive. He had been the broken soul with the twigs for hair and chains for bracelets on his tiny wrists.

Now, this time, the third time, she is still the Word Shaker and the Book Thief, but she is also something more, something Max cannot name, something so much better. He had still been that lost and broken soul up until the second her arms wrapped around him; now he is safe, he is where he belongs, he is home. Now, he is the Sky Stealer again.

Liesel continues: "Is it from your cheek that I took the seed?"

Her smile goes straight to his heart, pulling the pieces back into place and mending them with gentle touches. As his heart becomes whole again, Max feels it wobble inside him, quiver at the sound of her voice.

It takes him a moment to find his own. He digs down deep and pulls it from the depths of his soul as the tears flow freely down his face and hers. "Yes," he says, his voice growing stronger and more beautiful with each word, "Yes, it is me. I'm here."

They are crying.

Max pulls Liesel to him and holds her close, his arms wrapped tightly around her, never wanting to let go ever again. She cries into his shoulder, but she is smiling, weeping for joy for the first time in forever. Suddenly, Max's weak legs are too exhausted to hold him up any longer.

He goes down to his knees on the floor, but without hesitation, Liesel joins him, falling with him, still holding him and breathing his name. They sit sprawled on the floor, unaware of Alex Steiner watching them with tears in his blue eyes, unaware of the horrible world just outside the shop, unaware that they are so tiny, so small compared to everything the world has to throw at them. Nothing matters anymore except that they have found each other again.

They are falling.

They hug and cry and fall and hold onto each other like it is all they need in the world. And for right now, it is exactly that.


End file.
